


hold back the fear, darling

by Chiropter



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiropter/pseuds/Chiropter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kano can't stand horror films- but, like all things he dislikes, he's learnt how to put up with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold back the fear, darling

**Author's Note:**

> drabble for the prompt 'kano deceiving + gore'
> 
> warnings for mild gore and child abuse

Kano hates horror movies. He hates the sound of them, the screams and the awful screeching chords, and he hates the colours, always so arty and dull. He hates jumpscares more than anything- real or not, they can tear off his face in a second. 

There are times, though, that he doesn’t regret having watched them.

He doesn’t regret it at age twelve, when bullies corner him at lunch break. He can’t even remember what they came after him for. He reminds himself that it doesn’t really matter, that they’re probably justified, but it’s no good. Instinct is loud, and it talks over him. Their shadows are three times his size, but, as he closes his eyes, it’s a different shadow he sees beneath his eyelids. 

_His mind reels back, too far back, and it’s late one night and she’s left him home alone. He’s used to the dark, he’s used to the quiet, but monsters don’t leave just because you know them, do they, Shuuya? So he curls up beneath a blanket and leaves the TV on. He doesn’t dare stand up to switch the channel, not even when the screen fades to black, a warning in white letters telling him something he can only vaguely understand- and when the monsters start to move on the screen, he thinks, as he trembles, that at least they’re trapped in there._

Despite the years between them, those monsters sit beneath his skin. He opens his eyes and lets the red leak from them, and the smile he gives the children fleeing is one he remembers well. A smile from the same film- the grin of a dying man, missing half his face. 

\---

He doesn’t regret it at fourteen, either. The world is crumbling around him and his nightmares stink, again, of real things inside his room. Tears, mostly, buried far enough inside his pillowcase that he can never quite wash them out. Blood, too. He’s growing up fast, yet his bedsheets smell more like his cot by the day. 

_He’s seven, and his arm’s in a cast again, and he feels nothing but relief. It’s the perfect scapegoat. With this, he can explain away all of his injuries at once; “I fell out of a tree” sounds so much better than “I tripped, and a cat scratched me, and I crashed my bike”. A friend from school says it’s ‘cool’, her parents think it’s ‘cute and boyish’. They invite him round and, for once, he goes._

_The girl has an older brother. The concept of siblings is a strange one to him and he’s oddly jealous at the fondness they seem to have for each other, present even in their bickering. Watching them fight over the DVD player, he begins to wonder how much of this is ‘normal’. Where does it end? Where do_ they _start? He’s so busy thinking about it that he barely even notices as the boy slams the player shut on his sister’s fingers._

The movie they’d watched that day had, in fact, had just the reference point he needed now. 

It’s a good job, he thinks (hysterically, lying on the concrete with his head smashed open), that friend of his didn’t cry too bad. If her parents had come to help her, he would have needed to do more research.

\---

Sixteen, and now the cinema reel is moving fast. He draws on everything he can think of, staring across the room at that disgusting boy- the one person he can think of besides himself who deserves everything life’s given him. The one person he knows that deserves to share his fear. He feels real  _glee_ , a bitter, stabbing kind of pleasure, when Shintaro starts to cry. 

_He’s huddled up under a duvet, and the shivering on either side of him helps him forget his own. Kido’s face is stern but her palms are sweaty. Kano finds that, though the screen is flickering and his heart is pounding, he can put on a smile without hiding to laugh right in her face. She hits him and Seto jolts, as if waking from sleep. He looks distressed._

_"But_ why  _is it a monster?”_

_They all look at each other. Kido shrugs slowly, and Kano laughs some more, because there’s nothing else to do._

\---

Sixteen. The blanket’s been pulled off, and he’s staring death in the face. It dawns on him, slowly, that maybe his fear of scary pictures on a screen was just another filthy lie his heart told his head, because it’s not horror movie fear he feels now- it’s not something contained in a box, not a map or a drawing he can use and replicate. This is the shadow. This is the nightmares. And he is such a  _fool_.

The snake strokes his mouth, whispers something about how  _well_ it’s served him, how  _brave_ he’s been. Not that any of it matters now, of course. His whole body hurts, too much to breathe. 

It presses long nails to his eye sockets and he thinks, absurdly, of that first film he saw, hidden in the dark while the real danger was absent. There had been a scene at the end. Something he’d forgotten- the main character’s rival (friend, after all of it, because in the end, in horror films, no matter who died, they’d be cried for) had had his mouth slit open. A permanent smile. 

So, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he prays to die like that.

A waste of time, unfortunately. His wishes have all been used up. 


End file.
